Following its win at this year’s Shell Eco-marathon, BMW Eco Team Pro, of the University of Johannesburg (UJ), plans to attract more sponsors for the project to participate abroad, particularly at the 2016 Shell Eco-marathon in London.

“We will be the first South African team to enter this international event, putting the country in the spotlight,” enthuses BMW Eco Team Pro team leader Khizar Sultan.

The London event will require vehicles to be powered by batteries and an electrical motor.

Other categories include alternative fuels, hydrogen, compressed natural gas and hybrid systems.

The BMW Eco Team Pro chose to enter the alternative fuel category based on its competitiveness and because the bulk of the team members are mechanical engineering students.

To this end, the team will now be supervised by UJ Mechanical Engineering Department senior lecturer and researcher Dr Rudolf Bester.

This year, BMW Eco Team Pro, comprising 13 engineering students from UJ, won the battery electric prototype category of the Shell Eco-marathon, which took place from October 2 to 4 at Zwartkops Raceway, in Centurion.

The team, which also included a UJ accounting student, who facilitated part of the project financing, and an optometry student, who facilitated marketing and administration, received primary sponsorship from German vehicle manufacturer BMW and built the battery-powered BMW Blue Hornet from scratch.

This streamlined vehicle can travel 343.8 km on as little as R1’s worth of electricity, explains Sultan.

Owing to this efficiency, Shell has declared the BMW Blue Hornet the most efficient battery-powered vehicle in Africa and the tenth-most efficient worldwide.

During the Shell Eco-marathon, the BMW Blue Hornet was piloted by project manager Muhammad Moolla, with the vehicle being specially designed around his body dimensions. Prior to the marathon, he also underwent an advanced driving course – presented by BMW South Africa – to hone his skills, especially in terms of corner approaches and departures, and ensure efficient driving around the track.

As race engineer, Sultan provided Moolla with vital information throughout the race to achieve real-time efficiency gains.

“The engineering knowledge that the team has obtained thus far enables us, as student engineers, to approach problems in various ways. This results in multilateral viable solutions, of which only the best are implemented,” Sultan notes.

He adds that this assisted the team in enhancing its skills to reduce the vehicle’s weight and increase the efficiency of each component.

A day before the race started, a technical team from Shell conducted a safety and technical inspection on each vehicle of the 12 competing teams, which also included four teams from Nigeria.

“This inspection is conducted throughout the day to ensure that the vehicle meets the rules imposed by Shell,” says Sultan.